Vanity Mirror
by NocturnalAntihero
Summary: The story of Snow White contorted. Very contorted.
1. Chapter 1

There was once a king, and he had two little girls. The first was barely two years old when her mother died in childbirth; the second was barely two years old when her father married his second wife. The king was moved to marriage more than anything to provide his daughters with a mother; that end acknowledged, he could fain have chosen a less matronly woman to marry.

She was a young Lady of bewitching beauty from his court; her family recently ennobled by virtue of service to the king's late father. The Lady's grandfather received the Barony of Tanadin, and after the untimely demise of his older brother the her father became the third Baron of Tanadin. Her mother came from no noble family at all; in fact, the woman was an orphan. But she had been the courtesan of the late king, and upon his death settled for marriage to the Baron's younger (and considerably poorer) son. This woman, by no description unattractive, left whispers of ambition in her wake where e'er she walked. She committed suicide in the same year and but a month earlier than the queen died.

So it was that Lady Clara of Tanadin wed the king and, to the extent that all stepmothers do, his daughters. Years passed, in which Clara could be little bothered with the rearing of two little girls, but showed no disinclination to occupy herself greatly with matters of fashion, cosmetics, and potions to improve her nonexistent fertility. The king overtook the raising of his daughters with pleasure, and left his wife to her frivolity. Although boisterous affection kept him young, he could not bring Time to heel as well as he could his daughters. At fourteen and sixteen, his girls donned black gowns, and wept silently at his funeral. Neither presented a speech; they faded into the general mourning of the country, and no one noticed that no tears fell from Clara's eyes.

That evening, following the funeral feast and the memorial ball (which neither of the girls had attended; they preferred to sup in the privacy of their own chambers), Clara shed her black gown and wrapped herself in a white silk dressing gown embroidered with little butterflies that her mother had left her. She padded over to her vanity table, and drew back the cedarwood panels to reveal the only other object bequeathed to her by her mother: a great mirror. She had not made use of this particular mirror for quite some time, but seeing her husband's creaséd face frozen in death sent her running to the comfort that only the mirror could provide. She sat before it, and reached a hand out to stroke its smooth frame. "Mirror, mirror on the wall," her mouth shaped the words her mother had taught her, "who is the fairest of them all?"

"Princess Anne," came the reply.


	2. A Brief Flashback

-1A/N: Yes, I know that my character has spontaneously changed from Anne to Anabelle. Anne and Ane were just too similar for my taste…besides, I'm into three-letter nicknames.

As young girls left to entertain themselves are wont to do, Lisbeth and Anabelle created for themselves a fantasy world where a five-year-old and seven-year-old were Queens of the Faeries, and chamber upon chamber of cold stone wall lit by little more than dim autumn sun were a realm filled with elaborate, exotic, sweet-smelling foliage and curious beasts escaping coherent description.

"We need Faerie names," Lisbeth said, waving before her the blue lace fan that her father had given her before he left.

Anabelle looked up from her gift, a book of letters whose cryptic meaning she fervently endeavored to decode. "What?"

"Faerie names. 'Lisbeth' and 'Ana' aren't the kind of names faerie queens should have."

Ana looked worried that, merely by virtue (or, perhaps more accurately, vice) of her name, she had been found unworthy of being a princess. What would her father say? Would he not let her be a princess anymore? Her lip shook just slightly when she said, "They're good princess names aren't they?"

Lisbeth smiled down at her younger sister's concern. "They're good _human_ princess names, Ana. But since were _faerie _queens, we need to have faerie names."

Ana nodded shakily. "So what's yours?"

Ana's sister pouted a moment. Her gaze sank, and as the focus of her eyes descended, the pace of her fan's flapping ascended its pace until it appeared that the fan was desperately attempting to revive the little girl. At long last (about two minutes), she looked up and said carefully, "Rose Red, I suppose."

"Does it have to be a flower and a color?" Ana's color rose again; her eyes began to dart about the room for flowers whose names she knew. She knew lots of colors, but she was afraid that if she chose a flower from among the two or three she knew offhand that had previously found themselves nestled in palace bouquets she ran the risk of alternatively being too common, like Daisy Yellow, or absurdly ornate, like Chrysanthemum Chartreuse.

Lisbeth shrugged. "It can be whatever you want it to be." She paused. "Just don't copy me, okay?"

"Okay, okay…" Well, that put a flower right out. At the same time that a pattern to follow was cut off, Ana sighed with relief at release from her quest for a suitable flower, a sigh that her sister misinterpreted.

"Come on, Ana, it isn't _that_ hard."

Anabelle's eyes wandered to the window; some movement beyond its ledge captured her attention. She rose and ambled over. Leaning over to discover what strange vegetable, animal, or mineral had drawn her there, a drop of cold shocked her into recoil. She touched her nose, where the offending object had landed, then leaned right back out to see if it really was what it felt like…even though the sorcerer said that it was much to early when she had asked him to have a snowball fight with her and Lisbeth after her father had left…he said it was too early, but as she stood there another flake fell, and another and another, until the air was thick with snow. Ana smiled into the onslaught as she felt the little flecks land cold, then melt and run down her face. "Snow White," she whispered.

"What was that?"

"My faerie name," Ana said, half-turned so that Lisbeth could hear her. "It's Snow White."

Lisbeth crinkled her nose. "That's a weird name," she said. "Now come down from there before you catch numonya."

Snow White shrugged and leaned farther out the window.


	3. Chapter 3

The morning of Lisbeth's coronation found Anabelle immobile with fever. The wife of the healer was a greenwitch, and between the two of them an intimidating malodorous concoction was set before the princess. "I added whatever I could to make it more inviting," said the greenwitch as Anabelle cast an apprehensive eye at the goblet, "unfortunately, when a recipe makes up its mind to smell like a squirrel's steambath, there's not much even I can do about it."

The healer smiled grimly. "Oddly, it's a trend that runs most strongly in healing potions."

"Must make treating children difficult." Anabelle made no move towards the chalice in the healer's hands.

"Indeed. Therefore, I recommend you take the draught of your own accord, before I need to show _you_ the beasties that I use on _them_."

Anabelle gave the tonic a long, hard look. At last she took the goblet from the healer, wrinkled her nose, held her breath, and drained the cup. The offending flavor, as the greenwitch had said, had diminished under the onslaught of flavor from various herbs, but Anabelle still gulped pints of water afterwards to drown the taste of it. The potion helped her to help it by slowly drawing her eyelids closed; the healer had other business to attend to, but the greenwitch remained until Anabelle slept soundly. She was not there to tell a frantic Lisbeth that her sister's unnaturally deep sleep was not a precursor to death; instead, no less than six ministers and their respective underlings, summoned by the maids upon hearing the imminent queen's cries, were required to convince her to continue with the ceremony. Her ministers later would remark that their queen's tractability that day was a ruse to lure them into a false security; the day Anabelle walked unguided from her bed marked the last that they held a meeting with Queen Lisbeth d'Arcy Victoriae in less than two hours quieter than an army in war.

The dowager queen Clara observed the ceremony from the comfort of her vanity table; she rarely ventured outside but for to be led on walks through the garden by young men who, tastefully and truthfully, guessed her age much lower than it was.

She had seen the medicinal sleep of her step-daughter, but really she had much less cause for delight in the girl's illness than she thought. The mirror had told her that Anabelle was the most beautiful, true; however, as magic mirrors came, Clara's was a fairly poorly crafted example of the object- her mother was, after all, only a courtesan- and the range of its sight was fairly limited; in fact, it could barely see outside the castle, and years of searching for certainty from such a controversial subject as beauty had worn it down considerably. Anabelle may have been the fairest of the court, but a young seamstress a league to the north was fairer by far than Anabelle, even in the height of health. Anabelle was, of course, only fourteen and had yet to realize her full potential, but at the time she fell ill, Madga's radiance made the striking constrast between her iridescent black hair and smooth ivory skin all the more compelling. Through no fault but their innocent gaze, her crystalline blue eyes caused men and women alike to forget entirely why they had entered her shop at all. At nineteen, Magda was by far the fairest of them all.

The concoction dissipated Anabelle's fever within the week, but the illness had weakened her significantly, and one month later she and Lisbeth had a private supper in her chamber (she had insisted on setting the table herself, for the occupation, she had insisted) to celebrate her birthday. When Lisbeth had left to do political battle, Anabelle found herself lying in bed with a cat beside her. Cat peered at invalid, and promptly pinned Anabelle to the bed as her pillow.

Anabelle commanded that Julia have the run of the grounds, but the little brown-and-black tabby preferred her princess' company, and only ran when she could be sure Anabelle gave chase. Chasing Julia through the gardens seemed to do Anabelle more good than the constant pampering she received from her maids, and slowly the glow of health began to return to her face. Playing with her cat in Lisbeth's company at times made Anabelle so happy that she forgot entirely that she _was_ invalid. Within six months an hour's walk was not unheard of; within eight she could go that long and longer (though not by much- thirty seconds or so usually began to push her limits) with no one but Julia for company. Shortly thereafter she rode her mare again for the first time (Julia slept during this adventure) and soon resumed archery and fencing lessons. Academic tutoring had, at Anabelle's insistence, resumed as soon as she could stay awake for the space of a lesson. Julia found most of the stories exceedingly tedious; to prove it, she yawned loudly before falling asleep on the tutor's open book.

Had Clara possessed a better quality mirror she might not have become as alarmed as she had as soon as she did. As it was, she had been convinced that the illness would leave the princess pallid and frail, but the revival brought about by the chit's infernal beast rudely interrupted this perception. As Anabelle's healthy glow returned, she soared from pitiful invalid to young beauty; by the time she began to fence again she was positively adored by those who observed her in the gardens (her wanderings had even begun to amass a small audience), and for the next two months Anabelle and Magda traded positions as the moon changed phases: One morning, watching Julia chase butterflies would set Anabelle ahead, only to find Magda luminous under the waxing moon, because the man she fancied had paid her a compliment that day. But as her sixteenth birthday approached Anabelle fell behind less and less, and despite a late burst from Magda when her sweetheart asked her to marry him and she accepted, by the time Anabelle sat beside her sister at the ball to celebrate her birthday, Clara's mirror could tell the truth without contradiction: Anabelle was the fairest of them all.


	4. Chapter 4

-1Whenever gossip at the royal court lost its bite, the old ladies began to whisper what a shame it was that neither royal sister (now the queen nor the princess) had attached herself to a suitable young man or, better for the old ladies' stories if he were someone ridiculous like a horse-tamer, any man at all. Many of the old ladies pooh-poohed the implications that they might be ever so slightly hard of hearing; as a result the "whispers" produced a din that could, at its height, rival the cries of the queen's hounds at feedtime.

The more romantic women at court liked to believe that neither young woman had yet found true love, those better versed and battle-hardened by years at court wondered if the girls' lack of romantic interest at all reflected their stepmother's overindulgence of it. Though those voices were quickly hushed, glances were thrown at the beautiful dowager's plunging neckline and loose auburn ringlets and lingered, unsettled, on husbands brushing beads of sweat from their foreheads.

The speculations ran particularly hot one week before Anabelle's sixteenth birthday, on the day that Queen Lisbeth entered the ballroom, flanked on the left by Anabelle and the right by Clara, to celebrate her eighteenth birthday. Clara waved her hips and flipped her hair, but no one noticed her in their adoration of Anabelle; this ball was a step Lisbeth inserted into her recovery: her reemergence into court after the fever- and the court was awestruck. She had retired to her chambers an impossibly lovely young lady, and came back to them a year later even lovelier than before. Her modestly lowered eyes during her sister's speech sent them sighing, and the shy blush that colored her cheeks flushed and flustered those who looked upon her.

Anabelle did all she could to ignore the adulation of the court, but while their adoration may have escaped her notice, it had not escaped the notice of the dowager queen. The year of Anabelle's illness had allowed her to exploit her own beauty to the fullest extent. But now she watched the little tart, just shy of sixteen, by no more effort than playing with the little ill bred fur heap at her feet, walk in and sweep that ability away from Clara. What next? The young men who pampered her, would they fight for her affections once Anabelle walked among them? Would the women who feared and adored Clara's beauty withdraw their allegiance once Clara's beauty had been eclipsed by Anabelle's? Clara watched a young swain who had once pursued her ceaselessly for just one night in her arms lead Anabelle to the floor; the enraptured gaze that he could not tear from the twit sent Clara's blood burning through her veins- she would not allow her chariot to be seized by a mere girl who did not want to even glance at the reins. Clara shot to her feet.

For a moment they were hers again. For one brief span of consciousness, every eye had turned to her, and the power that had been hers was hers once again- and then, in les than the span of a breath Anabelle pulled it back again; the void it left great and consuming. She walked forward and rested her hands on the back of Lisbeth's throne.

"Doesn't it bother you that the entire court lays itself at your sister's feet, while you sit on the throne?"

"Not at all." Lisbeth looked up at Clara with a wry grin. "I appreciate it, actually: she keeps them occupied while I get things done. It's a good bargain." She chuckled. "Perhaps Ana wouldn't see it that way, but I think she'll survive."

"That's a dangerous assumption, don't you think?"

Lisbeth scanned the ballroom. She grinned when she found Anabelle, so resplendent that even standing still she kept in time with the music, while doing her best to blend in with the end of the buffet table. "Are you insinuating that she may not? I believe you are, and I am terribly curious as to the reason why."

"Don't forget," whispered Clara, "I was once a young woman of immeasurable beauty. With it comes a certain power. And power is very, very addictive."

Without an iota of motion, Lisbeth growled, "Madam, you grow too bold."

Clara shrugged and straightened. "Perhaps. But the morning you make with a dagger in your back, remember my warning." She stepped off the dais and turned back. "A wave of your hand," she whispered, "just a flutter. That's all it would take." Clara paused a moment, before turning to take the hand of a young man who had, until that moment, been devising a stratagem for approaching the lovely princess.

Lisbeth's eyes followed her stepmother's progress across the dance floor while her mind raced. For a woman who preferred to forget entirely any hint of kinship between herself and her dead husband's children, a life-preserving warning was a terribly magnanimous and suspect undertaking. But if her motive was power, this seemed to Lisbeth an absurdly roundabout route; if this was the only opportunity Clara had seen since the late king's death, Lisbeth had given her much more credit for cleverness than she ever deserved. But as Lisbeth watched, Clara's own gaze did not remain constant to her partners' faces; her eyes sought Anabelle's quivering form the way an alcoholic sought wine, and such hatred poured from those eyes to their object that would win wars even against the most persistant army.

_I was once a young woman of immeasurable beauty. With it comes a certain power. And power is very, very addictive._

_A wave of your hand, just a flutter. That's all it would take._

Lisbeth's knuckles went white on the arms of her throne. Taught with fear, she glared at the side of her sister's head, silently willing Anabelle to look at her. When their eyes met, Lisbeth gestured as gently, as calmly as she could for Anabelle to approach the dais.

By the time Anabelle arrived, Lisbeth was ready to leap upon her; but she restrained her nerves and settled for taking both her sister's hands in her own. "Thank you," she said. "I know you did not want to be here tonight, and I'm glad you did not leave me to face the throng alone. If you are tired now, you are welcome to retire. Just don't sleep to deeply; there is something I must tell you."


End file.
